


Interlude: Samarra

by 221b_hound



Series: The Pure and Simple Truth [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Interlude, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 22:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10649586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: The notebooks in which Sherlock wrote an alternative version of the truth have been burned. But John remains concerned about their contents. Months after the real events have passed, he speaks to Ella, trying to understand. He'll learn about Samsara, and about luck - some truths that maybe *are* pure and simple - before he later meets up with Sherlock and Rosie.





	Interlude: Samarra

**Author's Note:**

> A little flashback to John, Sherlock and Rosie's lives, first seen in A Pure and Simple Truth, before the last three stories are retold. Just to remind us all a little of where we're heading.

It took a few sessions for John to raise it with Ella. But in the end, his concern for Sherlock overrode his instinct to keep the strangeness of the handwritten stories private. The strange departures from what had happened in their lives, the fantastical elements that had nothing to do with reality. They way Sherlock had transformed, hidden and created so much. All the horrific things; all the beautiful things too.

“And the story,” John explained, “About what happened to… what happened. To. To Mary.” He still had trouble speaking of it himself. Still.

“The three of you were very happy, weren’t you?” asked Ella, in her mellow, kind voice. She didn’t really need an answer. Once he’d been able to speak of it, of him and Sherlock and Mary, there’d be no doubt. Whatever the wider world thought of such arrangements, it had worked for them. They all liked each other immensely, as much as they had loved each other. Out of well-meant deception and terrible dangers had grown this wonderful experience. This threefold love and companionship and joy.

“We were,” John said. “I think I worried that Rosie would change everything, but she only… I hadn’t expected Sherlock to be such a good father, you know? I was worried for a while that he felt excluded. But once he knew that Mary and I wanted him to… to… We were _together._ The three of us. That made him the father too. Maybe if. If we’d had. Time. If Mary hadn’t. The birth was hard on her, as an older mother, but she said she’d have liked… to try with him. If he wanted to. He’s so good with Rosie. He named her, you know? Well. Mary did. Because of something he said.”

Ella waited.

“The _four_ of us were happy as a family,” John said. “And I know that he loves Mary, and me. So why did he… write himself out of that happiness? Why did he write those things, about death and Samarra? Mary being some kind of stone cold assassin? Writing that he was killing himself to get Culverton Smith, but only so he could help me? Me beating him up, and bringing Eurus back to life only to make her worse than Moriarty? Why is he so self-destructive?”

“How does he seem now?”

“Since we burned the notebooks? Better. Like they purged something from him.”

“But you’re still worried.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“You want him to be okay?”

“I’m not sure we’ll ever be fully that. We’re. We’re good. We love each other. We love Rosie.” His expression went soft and adoring. “The best, most beautiful and cleverest child ever born. And that’s a scientific fact. Sherlock proved it with a flow chart.” His crooked smile hovered, then faded. He looked straight at her, for the first time. “What happened was _brutal_. And we might never be okay. But. We can say that, can’t we? That it’s okay to not be okay? We help each other. We’re there for each other, good days and bad.”

“You said several sessions ago, that your intimate life had resumed?”

John’s jaw worked like he wanted to protest either the coyness or the intrusiveness, but then he said, “Yeah. Our sex life’s good.” A little flash of a smile and Ella made a note. He rolled his eyes, but decided to find it funny.

“It always was. Not just sex, either. It's hard to make time when we've got a toddler. But that other stuff we talked about. The... the non-sexual intimacy. It's how we started anyway. The physical side is good. The emotional side, too. I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything. He used to hide a lot, from me, from everyone. Mary was brilliant at catching him out at that. He hasn’t done it for a while. But I don’t want to let him down by missing something, if he needs that from me. Or from a therapist. His brother, even. Anyone. Anything he needs. But Sherlock doesn’t always… he doesn’t always need the same things as other people, or he does, but not in the same way. So. So. What do you think? About Samarra, and the rest of it?”

“It’s hard to say without reading the material first hand, but I think Samarra is the key.”

John looked alarmed. Ella quickly continued.

“The story of the merchant trying to outride death only to meet it at Samarra, where it was always meant to meet him, is a story of inevitability. These stories Sherlock wrote, the way he wrote them – he’s the merchant, trying to escape what happened. There is no escape, of course. Those things happened and he can’t unmake them just by writing a different version of events. You said that he told you they were experiments, not final drafts.”

“He said he was writing them for Rosie, but I can’t imagine him showing them to her, at any age. They’d hurt her. He’d never willingly hurt her.”

“I think saying they were for Rosie was his _excuse_ , rather than admit he wrote them for himself. And I think he left them on the table that day for you to find them.”

John was thoughtful.

“You’ve said he’s very good at keeping things secret. If he left them out, do you think it was a mistake?”

“No. No, it was deliberate," said John. "I’ve always known that.”

“Do you think perhaps he used the notebooks to try to come to terms with it? Not only to understand the events in a different way, but to put distance between the events and himself, in order to make sense of them. Emotionally.”

“Why would he write me treating him so brutally?”

“Do you think he felt guilty?”

“I think we both did. We _all_ did. Mycroft too, even with what happened to him. It was a mess. A godawful mess.”

“How did the stories end?”

“Me breaking down while he comforted me; forgave me for what I did in the story. Sherlock reconciled to a homicidally insane sister he’d never met, bringing the family back together, with his music. Him and me in Baker Street with Rosie.  Happy ever after, I suppose.”

“Then I think that’s what you can take from it, John. Sherlock wrote a twisted version of events to explore his own feelings on it. Your role in the stories isn’t about you. It’s about his feelings of anger and guilt towards himself. At a guess, I’d say your near infidelity in the story was about his own concerns that he was isolated from you and Mary while she was pregnant with Rosie, until his place with you both was confirmed. But in the end, he’s come to terms with not only his relationship with you and Mary and the baby, but with all of it. In forgiving the invented you, he forgives himself. The Holmes family united means, I think, that he forgives them too, and even his late sister, for how her death affected them all. He spent his stories trying to avoid his history, but in the end, he meets it at Samarra. He accepts the inevitable, and he also accepts that he deserves the happiness he has with you, now.”

“That’s what you think?”

“It’s my best hypothesis, given what I know of you, and the notebooks, and your history with Sherlock.”

“Oh.”

“And can you accept it?”

“Accept what?”

“That you deserve the happiness you have, with Sherlock and Rosie. Despite losing Mary.”

“I…”

“Don’t let your fears dictate your responses, John.”

“What fears?”

Ella, as always, waited. She waited a little longer. Still nothing. She said softly, “You don’t always lose the ones you love. Sherlock returned. Remember that you regained Harry, too.”

John sighed. “That makes two, then. Sherlock and Harry. That’s unusual, though.”

“You’re a very lucky man, then.”

His brow furrowed, as though he’d never heard it put that way before.

“Do you know what most people would give, to have just ten more minutes with someone they loved?

He knew. Of course he knew. But he was _lucky_. Sherlock had come back. He and Harry had found a way back to each other.

“I suppose I am lucky,” he agreed at last, “To have loved two such amazing people. Mary’s the one who brought Sherlock back to me, you know? Sherlock and his family brought Harry back. We have Rosie.” His gaze met Ella’s again. “But Samarra’s waiting for me too. One day. All these near misses I’ve had, and all the people I loved that I’ve lost. It’s inevitable, like you say. One day, I’ll meet death at Samarra too.”

“We all get to Samarra eventually, John,” said Ella, “And Samarra’s name changes all the time. We don’t know when we’ll get there, wherever _there_ is. All we have is the journey, and those we travel with.”

John absorbed that for a while. Then he nodded, once, sharply. Decision made. He shook hands with Ella when he left.

“Thanks. Thank you. You’ve helped a lot.”

*

John placed his order at the till of the café where they’d agreed to meet, then stood watching his family while he waited. Rosie sitting in Sherlock’s lap in a booth by the window. Sherlock trying to get Rosie to eat her olives and hummus, instead of wearing the olives as rings and smearing hummus on Sherlock’s trousers. Sherlock patiently explaining the error of her ways to the child.

“Watson, you know you love hummus. It’s the one thing you eat more than you wear.”

Rosie laughed and waggled her be-olived fingers at him, then gnawed on one of the olives before offering it up to Sherlock. She waggled her fingers harder and began to frown, until, with a small sigh, Sherlock bent his head, wrapped his lips around her little finger and drew the half-gnawed olive off with his lips. He showed it to her, captured between his teeth, and then munched it down, making obvious om-nom-nom noises as he did.

“Your turn,” said Sherlock.

Giggling, Rosie made om nom nom noises without eating a thing. And then she gnawed on another olive before offering it to him.

“You’re diabolical, Rosamund Mary Watson,” Sherlock told her, but he was grinning.

“Bollycolly!” declared Rosie.

John joined them with the coffee order, keeping the cups well away from their energetic daughter who’d squealed at his arrival.

“Dadda!” She waggled her fingers at him. John engulfed two chubby fingers and an olive and she protested, “No!” But when he let go she offered him the olive again. He kissed her fingers and offered her some hummus on a triangle of soft pita bread. She made om nom nom noises and sucked the hummus off the bread.

“She’s being contrary today,” said Sherlock.

“That’s her taking after you,” John declared, “I’m very predictable. You’re always telling me so.” He leaned over to kiss Sherlock’s cheek.

Sherlock turned his face so that the kiss landed on his lips. “Not always predictable,” he said. “You’re more relaxed. Ella helped, then?”

“Yeah.”

Sherlock squeezed John’s hand. “I’m all right, you know.”

“I know. Me too. Not every day, but most days. I’m a lucky man.” He gave Sherlock another brief, warm kiss on the lips.

“Kiss!” demanded Rosie.

“A very lucky daddy, I am!” John told her, ducking in close to kiss her forehead and blow raspberries on her cheeks. Rosie squealed in delight and mashed her olivey fingers into John’s hair, making Sherlock laugh.

“Kiss, Papa!”

Sherlock could no more deny the food-encrusted child than he could gravity or a truly superb locked room mystery. He kissed her nose while she clutched at his cheeks with oily, salty fingers.

“I’m a lucky Papa,” he conceded softly, his eyes fixed on her cheeky face. Something in his tone was wistful. Full of love and just a little sorrow.

John leaned over to kiss Sherlock’s cheek again, and surreptitiously lick it. “Mmm,” he whispered in Sherlock’s ear. Just the low, rumbling sound of it was enough to make Sherlock sit straighter. John’s hand on his thigh was a promise for later too.

Rosie chose that moment to stand up on Sherlock’s lap and hang onto his ears while doing a sort of dance. Sherlock rubbed his face in her tummy, making her giggle and hiccup and hang onto his hair for stability.

“Ow. Ow. Ow,” said Sherlock in a long, low whisper, “John. John. Help. Help.”

John, in the middle of laughing, saw what Sherlock had seen a moment ago in their daughter’s gleeful expression. The way her cheeks bunched up and her blue eyes sparkled. Mary, there, in their daughter’s face.

John eased her little fists free of Sherlock’s hair and pulled her into his own lap for a cuddle. She wriggled and protested and then just as suddenly leaned into his chest.

Sherlock’s arm went across his back. He leaned in close, drawing John and Rosie both into a sheltering embrace.

“We’re all right,” breathed Sherlock into the warm space between them all.

“We are. We will be. I love you.” John kissed the top of Rosie’s head and then kissed Sherlock’s mouth. “You taste like olives.”

“You love olives.”

“Yes.”

“I love you. Even when you taste of second rate coffee.”

“Good.”

“Kiss!” demanded Rosie again, snug in the well of her fathers’ arms.

And they, of course, kissed her blonde hair until she giggled again.

A lucky family.


End file.
